Roadguy likes to talk about which thoroughfares are the most congested, but last week his thoughts were dominated by a different kind of arterial clogging: the cardiac kind.

On Wednesday, my dad experienced the classic chest pains, and within a matter of hours he received angioplasty and a stent. As soon as I was able, I road-tripped across Wisconsin to visit him, and despite a couple of tubes and wires sticking out of him, he was energetic and is now back at home. (A big thank-you to everyone who sent along good wishes — they seem to have worked wonders.)

The Interstate Highway System was designed with commerce and the military in mind, but its main role in my life has been to keep me connected to the people and places I care about, and being able to get from my living room to my dad’s hospital room in five hours made me immeasurably grateful for all that pavement. (Especially considering that a last-minute round-trip plane ticket would have cost me more than $500 — or about $5 for each minute of flying time. Morons.)

I’d hoped to take some good Roadguy photos while I was gone, but nothing jumped out at me — even the cars in the hospital’s visitor lot all seemed impeccably parked — so instead I offer you a few transportation-related pics from other recent Wisconsin trips.

First off, here’s a pair of signs you won’t see in downtown Minneapolis:

(Those are both from the Danbury area, just across the St. Croix River north of the Twin Cities.)

Next up: Wisconsin likes to draw diagrams for its drivers. This freeway sign near Milwaukee tries to explain a cloverleaf interchange…

…while this diagram of a roundabout in Sheboygan is less easy to grasp as you’re zooming past:

Let’s see … the dark square near the bottom appears to be an unlabeled “you are here” spot, and your choices are 8th Street, Indiana Avenue, 8th Street again or … the arrow to nowhere. (Just don’t linger as you try to figure things out — no parking.)

And in another example of where not to leave the car, here’s a definite only-in-Wisconsin sign, also from Sheboygan:

Yes, the street is actually closed for a parade to celebrate the glories of bratwurst — which brings us right back to where we started: clogged arteries. Coincidence? Roadguy thinks not.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 6th, 2006 at 6:05 am and is filed under Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.